Root Canals: Better than they Used to Be

"Root canal" used to be a metaphor for pain. When the dentist told me last week that I had to have one (or else have the tooth pulled), I didn't know what a root canal was. I only knew that it couldn't be worse than the tooth infection that brought me to the dentist.

The day before, after going to bed feeling fine, I work up with what felt like a recurrence of my TMJ problems. By mid-afternoon, I couldn't bite a sandwich without intense pain. I tried cloves, vanilla extract, ibuprofin, and acupressure, some of which brought mild relief.

The next day, after examining me, the dentist pulled out his I-phone and played a computer generated video of a root canal. A tiny, flexible drill removed the affected nerve and the space left by it was filled. It seemed simple enough, but I had a few questions:

ME: Can't the infection be cured with antibiotics?

DR: No, the infection will go away and you'll feel better for about a month. Then it'll come back. The nerve has to go, either through a root canal or tooth extraction.

ME: How long will it take?

DR: About an hour. There's only one nerve in the tooth that's affected [a bottom front tooth].

ME: Do you use a local or a general anesthetic?

DR: Local.

ME: How do teeth get infected?

DR: Trauma to the tooth, fillings, grinding your teeth. But I've seen infections that didn't seem to be caused by anything.

DR: Do you want something more for the pain than ibuprofin?

ME: Sure.

DR: I'll give you a prescription for Vicodin.

I didn't ask about pain--I assumed it would be painful.

I was mostly wrong.

Comments

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...

Why I've stopped eating fermented foods

I'm finally getting answers about weird health problems that have kept coming and going over the years for no reason I could ever explain: pounding heart, bloating, insomnia, heat intolerance, intolerance of high-fat meals, and getting winded easily even though I'm physically fit. These health problems all came roaring in at once this spring when I did a huge landscape project, pushing through it even while I had a cold. The yard looks fabulous, but I ended up with A three-week cold Post-viral syndrome for another few weeks An ongoing cough Insomnia (tired but wired late at night) A puffy face, especially in the morning and after eating foods I’d previously tolerated (including SIBO yogurt) 6 pound weight gain TATT (tired all the time) Being easily winded Having a hard time cooling off Being sensitive to sunlight Grok (X’s AI feature) said this could be mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). Mast cells are immune system cells that put out pathogen-fighting and other substances ...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog